Job Ad For US Bureau of Prisons Highlights Patients' Mental Illness As Recruiting Tool

- The Guardian, April 11, 2022. - Ed.

- Some readers offended by its reference to high rates of mental illness among incarcerated people to attract psychologists.

Psychologists who work for the bureau that runs federal prisons in the US can treat incarcerated people with every mental illness imaginable, according to an employment ad that stirred controversy on social media. The ad, bought by the US Bureau of Prisons (BOP) on Facebook as part of a broader campaign, asks readers to flip to any page in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a standard US text.

“Whatever disorder you land on, you’ll find it here,” says a quote on the ad, which is attributed to a BOP psychologist, Dr Jamila Thomas, who is based in Atlanta. The ad, which features a picture of Thomas, also says: “The clinical diversity you find at the Federal Bureau of Prisons is far beyond private practice. See for yourself. Join us.” One Twitter user spotted the ad and called it “maybe the worst” because it sought to use the BOP’s high number of incarcerated people with mental illness as a recruitment tool. Comments and reactions were generally critical of the agency.

The US leads the world with more than 2 million people behind bars, ahead of 1.5 million in China, whose population is nearly four-and-a-half times larger, according to the BBC. About 37% of those incarcerated in the US have a history of mental illness, a US justice department report found in 2017.

Clicking on the ad leads to a job listing for positions including staff psychologist, forensic psychologist, chief psychologist and drug abuse program coordinator.. “Weird!” read one typical reaction online. “I wonder if early mental health intervention would be more [appropriate] than warehousing people when they do something wrong without regard for helping them get better.” Others expressed concern that the ad offered potential recruits a wide array of patients on which to experiment with treatments.. The BOP defended the ad in a statement, saying market research “indicated potential applicants were interested in the opportunity to work with patients with a variety of mental health diagnoses”...

- More, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/11/us-bureau-prisons-job-ad-mental-illness